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Playability Status: Perfect

Tested On: Windows 7 x64, Windows 8 x64

Availability: Officially released for free (including source code)

Stylish 60’s chic themed “The Operative: No One Lives Forever” (to give it its full title) is a highly polished and superbly playable FPS title. Playing as super agent Cate Archer, you can move through 60 different levels of espionage action. Agent Archer will need to skydive, swim, drive and sneak around the games varied environments. Critically acclaimed when released and now something of a cult classic, No One Lives Forever can be run perfectly on the latest Windows 7 PC’s and is still extremely playable today.

Installation

The biggest problem preventing potential agents from diving into this game is the installer itself. On 32 bit versions of Windows the original edition of the game will install, patch and run without any significant problems. However, the installer file is incompatible with 64 bit versions of Windows, even though the game itself runs just fine. To solve this problem, you can download the fixed 64 bit installer by using this link. The installer is written using NSIS scripting language and has only been tested with the original release of the game. Currently the installer only supports English, but the full source code is available should anyone want to improve upon it. To use the installer, download it, then insert your No One Lives Forever disc 1 into your DVD drive. Now, run the installer and follow all the on screen prompts. If you encounter any difficulties, please let us know in the comments.

Note that if you have the Game of the Year Edition of No One Lives Forever, you do not need this installer file. The Game of the Year edition includes a different installer that is fully 64 bit compatible.

Patching

For best results we strongly recommend patching the game to the latest version. There were four patches originally released for the game. The first three patches were re-released as a bundle, allowing you to update the game from version 1.0 to 1.3. Unfortunately, the patch has the same problem as the games installer file in that it is incompatible with 64 bit versions of Windows. 64 bit Windows users can download a compatible version of the patch by using this link.

Patch 4 is compatible with all versions of Windows, and can be downloaded here.

The Game of the Year edition is already pre-patched to version 1.4 so no additional patching is required if you own this version of the game.

Windows 8 only – DirectDraw FPS fix

A big thank you to user “SuperGod” in the comments section for figuring this one out. Microsoft made some changes to the way legacy DirectDraw and DirectX games run in Windows 8. This has had various effects from actually making a few games run better to completely breaking many more. In the case of No One Lives Forever, the changes caused the games FPS (frames per second) to be capped at around 30. We PC gamers are used to butter smooth 60fps as a minimum of course, so this was rather disappointing. Thankfully though, you can now use this direct draw fix that will make the game run at full pelt on Windows 8. Simply download the zip file here. Once the zip file has downloaded, open it up. Inside the zip file there are two folders, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Open whichever folder matches the version of Windows you are running (presumably 8.1 for the majority of people as there’s not much reason to still be on Windows 8). Inside the folder is a file called “DDRAW.dll”. Copy this file to your No One Lives Forever game folder. By default it is in C:\Program Files\Monolith Productions\No One Lives Forever. That’s it, you can now run the game just fine on Windows 8.

Since this is a specific fix for these kinds of games, do NOT be tempted to overwrite any other copies of DDRAW.dll you may find elsewhere on your computer. To read more about what this fix does and why, see this link.

As an alternative to the above fix, you can try the DXPrimaryEmulation fix that user “SuperGod” discovered. This fix uses Microsoft’s own compatibility toolkit. We’ve written a simple installer for this fix that you can download here. You should use one or the other of these fixes, you do not need both. Simply use the one you find works best on your system. Uninstall one fix before switching to the other.

Tweaking Visual Quality

When you first start the game, the launcher will give you the choice of three quality presets. You can choose any of these and tweak the settings later. Because this is an old game, you can usually choose the highest quality settings even on a less powerful computer. Once in the game, there are several options you can tweak under the “Options” menu.

Display options – Use this menu to set the games resolution. Choose a resolution close to your monitors native resolution and set Texture Depth to 32. Note – If you are using the Widescreen patch as detailed below, do not open this menu as it will reset the changes you make when applying the widescreen patch.

Sound – Use this menu to change sound volume. Be sure to set sound effects quality to High.

Controls – You can configure the games controls here. The game includes joypad support, but you may need a third party utility like XPadder to get it working correctly.

Game – The options in this menu can be set to taste and do not generally affect performance.

Performance – This menu contains the performance settings that affect how good the game looks. Enter this menu and then click on “Display” to get to the advanced display settings. From here, choose “Texture Resolution”. You will now find yourself on a screen with six green slider controls. Ramp these controls all up to the maximum for full visual quality.

Make sure all special effects are turned to “On”. On our copy of the game, Mirrors were disabled no matter what we tried, if we figure out how to enable this setting in future the article will be updated.

Finally, enable “Sound filtering effects” if desired. The game will warn you that this will have a negative impact on performance, but since the game is ten years old it is unlikely to tax a modern PC too much. If you find that the game does run too slowly after making these changes, you can always revert back to the pre-set quality settings by opening the Performance menu and choosing the appropriate performance preset.

If you have an Nvidia or ATI graphics card, it may be possible to further enhance the games visuals by forcing antialiasing on in the game. This smooths out the jagged edges of the objects in the game. On our Nvidia equipped test machine, we opened the Nvidia control panel, went to “Manage 3D Settings”, selected “Program Settings” and then added the “lithtech.exe” executable from the games installation directory as a custom program. We then selected “Override any application setting” and “32x CSAA” as our antialiasing options. This slightly improved the graphical quality in game, smoothing out those noticeable jaggy edges on the image. See the documentation that came with your particular graphics card for more details on how to do this.

Widescreen support

Widescreen support is available for No One Lives Forever. The caveat is that some of the weapons appear stretched as agent Archer wields them. If you choose not to play in widescreen and you have a widescreen monitor or TV, make sure your TV does not stretch the image, there should be black bars at either side of the screen. The full discussion of the widescreen patch can be found on the Widescreen Gaming forum here. To apply the unofficial widescreen patch, download the file here, then follow these steps.

1) Unzip the nolfdll.zip file to a temporary folder on your PC. On modern versions of Windows, you can do this simply by double clicking on the zip file, which will open it like a regular folder. Now copy the contents to any folder on your PC.

2) Locate the No One Lives Forever program folder on your PC. By default it is in C:\Program Files\Monolith Productions\No One Lives Forever. Open this folder in Windows Explorer.

3) Find the file NOLFDLL.REZ – If you can’t find this file, you may have the file extension hidden. See this page for more information on this. Rename this file to NOLFDLL.OLD. On the Game of the Year edition this file might not be present at all, so simply skip this step and move directly onto step 4 below.

4) Copy the NOLFDLL.REZ from the zip file you downloaded and extracted earlier into the “custom” sub-folder in your No One Lives Forever directory. If you can’t find a “custom” sub folder, then create one.

5) Start the game from it’s shortcut but don’t click on “Launch” just yet. Instead, click on “Advanced”. This will open the NOLF – Advanced Options window. In the bottom of this window there is a section called “Command-Line”. enter the following line of text into this box:-

You can type this in manually or copy and paste. If you want another resolution other than 1080p, edit the command accordingly. For instance, if you want to play at 720p, edit the line above and substitute the number “1920” for “1280” and “1080” for “720”. Once it is done, the window should appear as shown below:-

6) Now click on “OK” and then “Launch”. The game should now launch in your chosen widescreen resolution, enjoy!

Troubleshooting

Problems saving games or settings – Like many older games, No One Lives Forever places its save game files and various configuration files in the same directory that it is installed to. This can cause problems on more modern versions of Windows as programs are not normally permitted to write to the program files directory. To avoid this problem, either install the game to an alternate location (e.g c:\Games\NOLF) or manually edit the permissions on the “No One Lives Forever” folder. If you used the default installation directory from the original installer, the games folder can be found at “C:\Program Files\Monolith Productions\No One Lives Forever”. A tutorial on how to edit folder permissions can be found here.

Known issues

Game may crash on exit (Windows 7/8 x64).

Widescreen patch makes currently used weapon appear out of proportions.

Levels containing underwater sections may cause issues on some graphics cards (see the comments below for more details).

Multiplayer, communities and other notes

Being something of a cult classic, the game still has a small but dedicated following. This community run multiplayer games and can advise new players on the best way to join in the fun. New agents should visit Unity HQ immediately!

The popular gaming utility Xfire supports No One Lives Forever, allowing you to take screenshots and videos as well as chat to your friends and browse the web all without having to leave the game.

Screenshots

Click on any screenshot for a larger view:-

Above: Running the game at 1080p with all settings set on max. Below: The game in its original aspect ratio.

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131 comments

I’ve manage to get the game running smoothly except when I dive into water. Whenever I dive into water, the screen is black except I can see my health/armor, the oxygen level I have, ammunition amount, crosshair, the different functions/ammunitions a weapon could have when I cycle through it, and the side panel that has what weapons I have available. Could it be a problem with the actual disc making this happen?

Doesn’t sound like a problem with the disc. That could be a fault that I didn’t spot because I only did the first level (the briefing). What’s the first level with water on it so I can look into it further?

Misfortune in Morrocco End of Scene 3 right before you start Scene 4, and middle of Scene 4: Everything works correctly until I go underwater and the screen turns black. The screen turns back to normal when I get out of the water, but if I dive back in, the screen becomes black again. I’ve looked online a couple places and I’m thinking it may have something to do with my Operating System. I have Windows 7. I’ve tried taking my working version from Windows XP to my Windows 7 and transferring it, I’ve tried getting it off of the NOLF 1 and NOLF 2 disc to make it work and no success :( I managed to get away with playing up through Tenuous Lead Scene 5, but I’m worried I won’t be able to play The Dive Scene 3 if it is always black when I go underwater.

I’ve tried doing that. My Windows 7 came in with a pre-installed DirectX 11, but I went ahead and installed the DirectX end-user runtimes. I have a Radeon (TM) HD 7750 Driver Version 8.951.9.1000 and Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 Driver Version 8.951.9.1000 for my display adapters. I clicked on the “Update Driver” for both of these and yet my computer says there are no updates for them.

That’s correct, DirectX 11 is not the same as previous versions of DirectX, so you still need that update. You could try asking on Unity HQ (http://www.unityhq.net/), they are very friendly and may be able to solve your problem.

Yeah :( I’m still trying to figure out if there is anything I can fix. Right now I’m just working with it. I used a cheat to get pass the Dive Scene 3 that I couldn’t complete, but I managed to do all the other missions prior to it just fine. It may affect the Intelligent Items in Misfortune in Morroco Scene 4 and Tenuous Lead Scene 5, but I can still complete the mission without using a cheat. The only missions left that I think this may affect game play is Trouble in the Tropics, Alpine Intrigue, and the Indomitable Cate Archer mission. I’m thinking I might have to use the cheat again the Alpine Intrigue scene 3, and I think I get by with the rest. What’s interesting is that if you play the Briefing Scene before the dive, I managed to get the icon to shoot the belt buckle while I was in the water and the screen was black. It’s as if game play is completely the same but you’re playing blind folded lol

Windows 7 and 8 are both compatible. If you have the GOTYE it should install direct from the CD regardless of language. My installer for the standard version has only been checked on an English language (UK) version of the game.

This doesn’t work properly for windows 7 x64 bit, when I play this game it freezes and then I get a black screen with the game running in the background. I end up having to press CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up task manager and click cancel just to get rid of the black screen. Sometimes it crashes completly and says that msvcrt.dll is the fault module name. Can anyone let me know why this happens on windows 7 x64 bit.

The game works just fine on our Windows 7 64 bit PC, I’ve personally played the first few missions and had no issues whatsoever on Win 7 64. Have you tried updating DirectX and/or your videocard drivers?

I’ve heard that the black screen flicker issue is common for many users with newer computers. Lithtech is a very poorly made game engine and works best on older computers. Have you had the black screen flicker with your PC cause most people do. Anything that I can adjust to make these Lithtech games run properly on my PC cause Contract JACK and NOLF 2 also does that black screen flicker where I have to CTRL+ ALT+DEL just to bring it back to normal screen again. I’ve got many other older games and they all work fine without issues it’s just anything monolith lithtech.

I’ve never seen this issue or heard of it before, it sounds like something is interfering with the gameplay and popping up while you play. Try to disable any other software you have running. If you are running antivirus or firewall software, put them into Game mode if possible.

I’m currently having trouble, the graphics in No One Lives Forever are all glitched out, like the textures are all messed up in weird ways (for example every door is just a featureless grey texture)

I have not a single clue why this is happening, I’ve managed to get NOLF working just fine on my old Windows 7 computer, but now on my new laptop this happens and I’m just at a loss, does it have something to do with my drivers? as far as I know directx is up to date

Hey, could someone help me out? I have NOLF 2 and a windows 7 computer. everything is totally find expect that the movie scenes have no sound and the scenes with moving mouths are all cut out. no vocalizations at all. other than that, everything works perfectly

Hi, any suggestions as to what I can do next? I’ve installed the above suggested in the article (64 – 32 bit installation) and the disc now starts and I can choose settings/gameplay/difficulty etc but when I go to start the actual gameplay, it just stays on the loading screen and will not load.
Thanks

I’ve heard of other games which have the low fps problem under Windows 8. It seems to be a problem with the way Windows 8 manages DirectDraw in older games. Here is a workaround for the game “Worms Armageddon”, which has a bad performance under Windows 8 – just like No One Lives Forever.

No problem, I appreciate you taking the time to comment. Indeed, the DirectX SDK could be useful, the No One Lives Forever source code is publicly available, so hopefully one day someone with programming experience and some free time will be able to fix the 30fps limit on Windows 8.

Unfortunately, old DirectX games seem to be emulated on Windows 8.1, and the performance im fullscreen mode is really bad. I solved the problem by forcing the game to run windowed by adding “+windowed 1″ in the command line of the setup menu. This helped for other old DirectX games as well, so give it a try ;-)Oh, and i also turned off the scaling on high DPI stuff in the compatibility options of nolf.exe, so that the window has the right size.

Ive set NOLF to windowed mode for Windows 8.1 as suggested and it has solved the 30fps issue but i’m that the cut scenes dont play out in full. They seem to get cut short and some of the characters and objects move really fast. Has anyone been able to solve this issue.

The problem with the black screen when underwater is present on all Intel Ivy Bridge HD 2500 and HD4000 . Doesn’t matter youre running Win XP 32bit or Win 7 32 or 64 , I tried them all. The graphics are ok once youre out of the water. There seems to be an issue with Intel graphic driver or hardware.
My solution was to install an older ATI card : x550 128bit PciEx .
The solution is ok for desktop computers , but what can one do if he/she has a laptop?

Has anyone figured out what causes to low fps. It’s ridiculous. I played steady 60 fps on windows 7 and now I have 30 max sometimes it drops to 10-15…
Damn… Windows 8|8.1 really f*cked up old games support… (I couldn’t play with Vice City Either)

Windows 8.x 30fps fix.
Just run NOLF in a window. +windowed 1
Then download a small program BorderlessWindowed, launch nolf, run BorderlessWindowed and add LithTheh to program, tick auto.
Now you’ll have a houndred fps ;)
Cap your FPS to 60 using any 3rd party frame limiter or via driver, profit.

Forgot to mention…
Before you decided to edit my value post you could at least check what is that, simple virus scan.
I understand why you did that, but still it’s not a great way to say thank you for someone’s help.
Hopefully you’ll revert your decission.
There is no other way to fix nolf, we both know that.

Yes it’s quite important, I can’t put up links to copyrighted things, software that’s distributed without it’s proper license/attributions or to anything that might be malicious. Plus I’m also quite curious too, especially as this kind of software might help other games. Thanks for understanding.

Has anyone had the issue of dialog getting cut off during speaking scenes in the game? I have it running on a windows 7 VM. But this is an issue I am seeing while running the game. Is there a possible fix for this? Thanks

One of my friends is a Mac fan (I know, poor him, naa just kidding :) ) and he plays a lot of games in Windows VMs and finds the performance to be quite acceptable especially on older games. VMWare seems to perform better than Virtualbox in this regard.

Because there is a difference how game/system works after it.
For example, “cracked .dll” breaks overlay, someone may want to record for simple “let’s play” with this patch, some things become broken.
I’m giving for users a choice.
IMHO .sdb fix is MORE bullet proof and more transaparrent.

I had a problem during recording dxtory, RTSS is broken, etc, but we both know what is working for me/you, may not works for the others.
Like I said before, I’m giving for users a choice, nothing more.
Regards.

Hello everyone ! So I managed to install the game and started playing. Everything as working just fine when I reached the level “Misfortune in Morocco Scene 3″ and the level is not loading. I’ve waited ages in front of my screen and nothing. Even tried to skip the level starting on Scene . I feel so frustrated! If anyone knows what to do…

That’s really odd, sorry I’ve not come across that problem. It’s true I don’t have time to test every game I cover on here from start to finish but I’ve played NOLF quite a bit and not had any issues like that.

I know it’s weird. I tried to uninstall/install the game again but it’s still the same. I was hoping someone around had encountered the same issue or heard of it. I use windows 8.1, i have the NOLF GOTY version…

I installed the game just fine, including the latest patch, and the widescreen mod. When I went to play again, my saves were missing. I also couldn’t configure the controls; everything was “unassigned.” I even tried to set everything back to default, and uninstalled the game twice, but no luck.

It makes no sense. The game was running great at first, but then it suddenly started to go bonkers. I don’t know what the deal is.

*Slight lagging when I zoom in with a weapon to aim (the camera starts lagging and doesn’t get better until i zoom back out).

*Graphic problems in general. When I play a map and start looking around, and especially if I move the camera quickly, there are these “glitches” that kind of ruin the game experience.

*When I go underwater in any map, everything goes glack.

The really weird thing is that I am almost 99 % certain that I played this game earlier on this exact computer without any problems what so ever. I was using a downloaded version of NOLF:GOTYE at that time, instead of the CD version that I am trying to get working now.

I should note that after I tried the CD version and couldn’t get it to work properly, I uninstalled it and tried to get the downloadable version working – no luck. Same aforementioned problems.

I think I have pretty much tried every solution in this article to get the game working, but nothing seems to do the trick. I really don’t know what to do.

Being able to play this game would be the perfect christmas gift.

PS: I have tried signing up for the Unity website so that I could make a post about this there, but there seems to be a problem with my validation process. For some reason I never receive that validation email that supposedly gets sent.

Anyway, I really hope that someone out there can take a look at the problems I am currently having with the game and maybe (fingers crossed) come up with a solution to fix them all so that I can finally play this amazing game.

Also, I found this other widescreen patch that claims to fix a lot of issues that others haven’t been able to (resolutions with more than 2048 pixels in one direction, 21:9 support), in case you’d like to check it out. Your link to WSGF is dead, so I assume it hasn’t been updated in a while.

Yes, I’ve done both of those, to no avail. I did fine a (sonewhat finicky) workaround though. I’m trying to run the game at 2560x1440x32, which seems to be causing the problems. What seems to work is when I select 1920x1440x16 from the launcher, then change to 1440p@16 bit in game, and lastly going to 32 bit. It’s very strange that it won’t just let me properly select that from the launcher, and it does crash the game ~1/4 times, but it does work somewhat reliably. I’ve got to wonder why no one has bothered to make a sourceport (like GZDoom or NewDark for Thief/SS2) given that the source code has been available for so long.

You’re trying to run at 2560x1440x32? That’s quite the detail to omit :) Still, I have to say I’d love to try that too if I had the hardware. When researching NOLF2 I see some folks have managed to run that in > 1080p resolutions too.

” I’ve got to wonder why no one has bothered to make a sourceport (like GZDoom or NewDark for Thief/SS2) given that the source code has been available for so long.”
Where do you get that? I highly doubt that the games sources are released.
Also it’s unknown who has what rights to the game. Even those who wanted to license it couldn’t:http://kotaku.com/the-sad-story-behind-a-dead-pc-game-that-cant-come-back-1688358811

Hey, I’d just like to say that I was having both the Underwater Black Screen bug and the Dialog Cut Short bug that Sam mentioned in July.

While it’s been mentioned that Intel Graphics Units don’t really like the game too much, if you can change to an ATI or NVIDIA card in their respective control panels, make sure it’s not NOLF.exe your setting to use the high-performance GPU (that’s just the launcher). Instead, change “lithtech.exe”, which is the process running the game itself.

As a side note, when I finally fixed the bug, I ended up with another one. My NVIDIA card caused the menus to flash rapidly. I fixed that by playing in windowed mode. (“+windowed 1″ as an additional argument in the launcher’s “Advanced…” menu)

The Dialog Cut Short bug is caused by the game running over 60 FPS, causing timing issues in cutscenes. You need to cap the game at 60 FPS to fix it.